As a child, it was alwayspure anticipation, the sense of somethingpouring out of a constantlyself-filling source, readying itself solelyfor our delight. Now I keepthe list running in my head of allthat is not yet done, might not be done withoutmy doing. Though gifts still beckon, so toothe slowly nagging sense of somethingthat must be filled,Continue reading “Advent 5”
Tag Archives: grace
Advent 3
So rare the still point.We must come backto the same place in tinystolen moments to seehow grace grows in spite of us.Infinitesimal changesslowed and tardied by oursenseless flurryyet growing all the same.The child gift grew with Mary’s Yes;may I be quick to slow to You,to give my Yes to Your life in me.
Waiting 6: Bathsheba
Viewed from the voyeur’s vantage,she is only ever Other,breasts bared or barely draped in dampness,bathing or emerging from waters,eyes come-hithering,sometimes her whole body issuing itsdubious invitation.No doubt David saw her this way,eyes surveying the rooftops for all he called his own,the private and holy ritual she performedthe only thin excuse his lust required.Only Tissot hasContinue reading “Waiting 6: Bathsheba”
Waiting 5: Rahab
They seldom ask why the men were there.As they slipped down the wall, I thought:Just as it’s always been,the men sliding away to their homes,the shame slipping off their well-oiled skin.Nothing touched them.They would take their promised land just like they always had;mine would be the leftovers,mine the scarlet thread left dangling mid-air.Only, as theContinue reading “Waiting 5: Rahab”
Waiting 3: Leah
I’ve found this next one in the Waiting series hard to write. So hard that I’m a week behind in my weekly poems. Some of the stories that I’m looking at are stories I know very well, yet I’m seeing in them the pains of characters often marginalised in how we tell them. The storyContinue reading “Waiting 3: Leah”
Waiting 2: Hagar
I was not born to choose.From the very start they told me,”Go here, do this, take that.”So it was no big step (I told myself)when my mistress said,”Go to your master’s bed.Give him a son. I can’t.”I was not taught to say, “I won’t”,never heard the word violate,nor how a body was not like aContinue reading “Waiting 2: Hagar”
Ordinary Wednesday: November Rain
After a day of near-summer heat, my home town returns to rain. And it falls gently around my house, on the grass and the trees and in the garden beds, and coming to the end of a tiring day I am soothed by the sounds it makes. Rain reminds me that God is good: HeContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: November Rain”
Ordinary Wednesday: Small Steps
I have always been one to leap ahead. When I was thirteen and a half I declared to my family that I was “nearly fifteen”. I spent most of my childhood planning what I would do “when I grew up”, and now that I am a grown up I wonder when I will feel thatContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Small Steps”
Ordinary Wednesday: Natural Theology for Pre-Schoolers
This is a conversation I had with E, my nearly four-year-old, at breakfast yesterday, about why the porridge was not ready yet, even though he was yelling at it and telling it that he wanted it to be ready. Me: It’s like in Basil and the Branch [a kids’ book that he loves about aContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Natural Theology for Pre-Schoolers”
Ordinary Wednesday: Unfinished Business
As a teacher, I have strange dreams. Often they involve classes wildly out of control, or me being absurdly late to a class. The schools in which I teach are often an amalgam of all the schools I have known: the primary and secondary schools that I attended, as they were in the 90s, andContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Unfinished Business”
The Consolations of Writing 